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It seemed to take longer for winter to start but we’re finally in it, and I’d like to share some Eastern philosophy about this season. Much of my career as well as my personal spiritual practice has focused on the lessons of the natural world. Every season has things to teach us, but the winter lessons seem to be among the hardest for modern humans to accept. What winter represents is so vital and yet so absent from most Americans’ lives.
In Chinese Five Element theory, winter corresponds to the Water element. In wintry places, we can often look out at the landscape and see little but water (albeit frozen as snow). Water represents resources, reserves, and potential – like a well or a spring. Simply looking at where civilizations have developed shows us just how directly water dictates the potential for life to develop.
In the same way, winter is a time of potential energy, when the outward activity of plants and animals is minimal. Compared to the other seasons, it’s relatively dark and still. Winter is the time of year when stored reserves are most important, because fewer resources are available outdoors. Historically, this has been a time to sleep more, when we rely on our stores of food and fuel to get us through the season.
Likewise, Ayurvedic philosophy considers winter the season of kapha (“kahp – ha”), one of three fundamental components of the human mind and body, which is also associated with water. As kapha pertains to our ability to accumulate, store, and bulk up, it fits well with the Chinese concepts above. Our kapha is what gives the mind and body water’s qualities of suppleness and flow. It’s integral in the lubrication of our joints and other tissues (especially important in the dryness of winter). The kapha time of year is best used to save up energy.
Daoist philosophy sees each season as representing one of the critical steps in any cycle or project. The seasons mimic the life of an organism, a creative endeavor, or a business venture. These seasonal dynamics can be seen clearly in the life of a plant: In winter, plants are mostly dormant. Their energy is stored in their roots or seeds, resting in the cold ground. Spring awakens this potential energy. Shoots pop up everywhere and plants have direction and drive. Summer brings the pinnacle of growth, expansion, and flowering. The cool nights of late summer ripen grains and fruits, ushering in the harvest period. In fall, leaves are shed, withering and decay occur, and the remnants of the past year’s growth return to the earth to fortify the soil. Finally, in winter again, plants become still.
Each idea begins in its “winter” as potential energy, a seed. In its spring, the idea grows into a plan; structure and direction are established. Summer brings greater fire, excitement, momentum, and connection with others. In late summer, the idea achieves maturation and it yields a return – the harvest – and an experience of abundance. In its fall, the material expression of this cycle gives way to a recognition of the deeper richness of the experience itself. We reflect on the essence that existed before and throughout this cycle – the formlessness beneath the form that has fallen away. Back in winter again, it’s necessary to be still, turn inward, and reflect before the cycle starts over.
When we’re out of balance, we tend to skip over seasons or to chronically get stuck in one seasonal phase. Our modern lifestyle deprives many of us of any real winter. We love new projects and planning (spring) and fervent growth and expansion (summer). We even like to dwell on how good the past was (fall), but we often hate to stop completely (winter).
In humans, the “resources” water represents are encompassed in the Chinese concept of jing and the Ayurvedic concept of ojas or “essence” – the unreplenishable allotment of lifeforce that we’re all born with. Our lifestyle strongly influences how long our jing/ojas will last. As our jing/ojas runs out, we start to age and eventually we die.
If we allow life to flow (like water) in its own natural way – not attempting to manipulate it, not fighting it, not pushing it – it flows (and our jing/ojas lasts) a very long time. But when we’re always running (mentally or physically), when we live life without regard for how much energy we actually have, how much sleep we get, or how well we eat, we burn our jing/ojas up faster. When we habitually use stimulants like coffee and sugar, we’re deny the necessity of winter, and in so doing, we convert our deep reserves into short-term energy we can use right now.
Sometimes water is a rushing river. Other times it’s a placid lake. Each form has its time and place. When fear comes up (the emotion of the water element), we tend to run – like a river. It’s often some form of fear that makes us feel we can’t stop. We can’t let death catch up to us, must always prepare for the future. Fear makes us feel that there’s always an endless to-do list. Our ultimate fear is of running out of resources, running out of the things that make life good, and running out of life itself.
Ironically, when we’re always running around to survive, we miss out on enjoying the things that make like sweet. One reason we get sick more in the winter is that we’re violating a natural dynamic. The world around us has turned inward and reduced its ambitions, but we refuse to go along with this flow.
The best thing we can do for ourselves is to incorporate “winter” into every day, making space for stillness throughout our lives. Meditation, restorative yoga, qi gong, breathing, and tai chi are ideal practices. Watching TV and movies, reading, socializing, and being on the computer don’t count. While sleep is incredibly important, it doesn’t give us all the benefits of cultivating stillness (especially mental stillness) in waking life – which teaches us the vital skill of maintaining a peaceful foundation in the midst of drama and uncertainty.
In the winter season, I recommend making a special practice of (1) noticing how you relate to winter and (2) meeting with the spirit of winter and being open to what it has to teach you.
What arises in you when you think of winter?
If winter for you is a time of lots of activity, how does it feel to consider slowing down?
If you tend to live in the future in your mind and have a hard time being present in the current moment, what is it that being still uncomfortable? What do you think will happen if you stop?
What part of you insists that you always need to be preparing for the future? Can you have a dialog with that facet of yourself? What does it need in order to be at peace?
If you resist winter, what is it about the winter that you dislike?
Can you meet with the spirit of winter – without any of your own preconceptions? What is it like?
Is winter actually “depressing” or is the gloom a response to your inability to stop, listen, feel, look inward, and accept?
What are your negative stories (if any) about winter?
If you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, to what degree have you adopted others’ stories about the energy of winter, and is this consistent with your own felt experience?
What is winter asking you to do in order to come into sync with nature?
If you have a difficult time with winter, I hope this winter is different. I hope this is the year you make peace with it. And if you have a hard time incorporating the “winter phase” into your life, my wish for you is that you learn to bask in that stillness, to feel it recharging you, to be fully okay with stopping.
Be well,
Peter
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When a patient comes in to see me, I get a brief opportunity to facilitate a shift toward the positive. I might overhaul their diet, give them exercises, insert acupuncture needles, or prescribe some medicine. It’s clear that these interventions help. But when I look back at the treatments that were major turning points for people, about half the time what made the difference was something I said.
Most of what I say is pretty simple stuff. The more simple, the bigger the potential impact. All the essential truths of the great spiritual traditions are simple. But they’re underappreciated and easily forgotten. There’s so much other stuff vying for priority real estate in our minds. And in a time when we put so much value on complexity – science, for instance – simple concepts don’t get taken seriously. Someone once said, The truth is simple. If it were complicated, everyone would get it.
The nice part about profound truths being simple is that you don’t have to work so hard. Stop trying to have all the answers; just listen and remember what you already know. The simple truth I want to share with you today is one you are undoubtedly familiar with: positive thinking makes good things happen. If someone said to you, “I have the solution to most of your problems: think positive,” you might say, “I have the solution to why nobody likes you: unsolicited, crappy advice.” But I urge you to reconsider.
If you consistently had positive thoughts about your life, do you know what would happen? You would feel consistently positive about your life. And that pretty much constitutes a good life, doesn’t it? Regardless of whether or not your life is exactly the way you want it to be, if you cultivate positive thoughts, your consciousness – your experience of life – will be more positive. Isn’t that what really matters? Your perspective is more important than your circumstances. Wouldn’t you rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable? If you’re happy, you’re happy.
But it’s not just a mind trick where you fool yourself into being thrilled by a pathetic life. As you make a habit of forging positive thoughts, you become a more positive person, and then the objective circumstances of your life change. Have you ever met someone who was really successful and also super positive? Which do you think came first? I would venture to guess it was the positive part.
The tricky aspect – or so it seems to a mind that loves complication– is actually remembering to think positively. Many people feel it’s not their innate nature to be positive, or that life circumstances have made it difficult to be an optimist. But they have just made a habit of focusing on and emphasizing negative viewpoints. It’s true that the glass is both half empty and half full. Both perspectives are valid, but they are not equally meaningful observations. The optimist focuses on what is and the pessimist on what isn’t.
Like the song goes, accentuate the positive. Here’s how:
- Look and listen for good signs, positive news, beauty, and fascinating things, and then latch onto them, talk about them, share them, savor them, amplify them, run with them. Imagine you just tapped into a vein of gold in the earth, and now you want to follow that vein. Jump from one good thing to the next. Make a game out of it.
- Create more positivity in the world. This is especially important if you find it hard to arouse your own optimism. Instigate positivity in people around you, even if you feel dark inside. Create the vein of gold that you can then follow, by asking people about their lives, their kids, their dreams. You will ignite a light in someone else that will lead you in the right direction. Then keep doing it. Deliver genuine compliments. Help others to see the positive side of whatever they’re grappling with. It’s often easier to do for others than for yourself.
- Get out of the dirt. Following the gold vein is as much a matter of not choosing to veer into the dirt as it is a choice to follow the gold. Catch yourself choosing to indulge in negativity and be disciplined about shifting your attention to something else. It’s like breaking an addiction. Notice which of your acquaintances have a “this sucks” mentality and (a) hang out with them less (b) laugh internally at everything negative they say – lightly, not disparagingly (c) don’t let them throw you off your gold vein. Also, stop watching Breaking Bad. Choose your media consumption consciously.
- Tweet/post/comment responsibly. The stories and opinions you choose to share shape who you are in the world – plus who and what you attract. Are you a positive influence on your environment or a negative one? Before you click “Post,” look at what you’ve written. If it’s snarky or amounts to “Doesn’t this suck?” just delete it. You won’t feel any regret.
- Respond with humor to situations that would otherwise make you angry, irritated, or anxious. I know it’s hard, but if your habit is to relinquish the whole gold vein just because of some stupid situation, you simply cannot engage with it in an adversarial way. Be imperturbable. Go on a drama fast. Stay committed to your positivity.
- Lose the belief that finding problems and errors makes you smart or likeable. People who enjoy finding what’s wrong with everything rarely care as much about looking for solutions.
- Know what you want. Most of us spend so much time thinking about our current problems and the undesired future situations we hope to avoid that we have a clearer sense of what we don’t want than what we do want. Know with laser-like precision what kind of life you want and replace the habit of dwelling on what you don’t want with savoring the anticipation of getting what you do want.
Once you’re in the zone, let’s go have some tea together. Positive people are fun to be around. I wonder what cool thing you’ll do next.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => The Truth is Simple. Start Feeling Better.
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Over the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at the factors that make for a longer, richer, more alive life.: (1) Loving life and living for the present (2) Working, stretching, and relaxing all parts of yourself (3) Dancing with consciousness (4) Reducing media consumption (5) Paying attention to your breathing (6) Eating less (7) Prioritizing community and service (8) Exchanging love and touch. You can read more about all these topics on our blog (there’s a lot more to them than the list you just read!). Today I’ll add a couple more items to the list.
#9: Optimize Your Sleep.
There are people who live long lives but don’t sleep well or much, but they tend to be outliers. Virtually everyone lives better, if not also longer, with good sleep. One of the leading causes of death has always been accidents and we’re a lot more likely to have them when we’re tired or mentally cloudy. Furthermore, when we’re well rested, we’re more likely to operate from the “evolved human” part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) – thinking rationally and broadly. When we’re tired, we often default to the primitive “animal brain” and make decisions based on survival, pleasure-seeking, and pain-avoidance.
There’s really no substitute for adequate, replenishing sleep. If you want to learn something, you need sleep to imprint what you’re learning in a lasting way. If you want to get stronger, you need sleep to turn all that exercise and protein into muscle tissue. If you want emotional intelligence, patience, and mature communication, you need sleep in order to be non-reactive. If you want optimal performance in anything – music, chess, gymnastics, or foosball – you need sleep to recharge your nervous system. If you want to kick an infection, you need sleep to give your body a chance to do its work without demanding other things from it.
#10: Laugh More.
When I recommend laughter, I mean two things. First, just laugh more – because it’s fun and it’s good for your body and mind. Listen to stand-up comedy, share jokes, exchange tickles, join a laughing club, choose funny media over bitter. Do whatever it takes for you to have more belly laughs in your life.
Second, take a light-hearted attitude toward life. And death. In my opinion, there’s nothing that can’t be laughed at. I don’t mean derisive, mean-spirited laughter. I mean the laughter that comes from the recognition that life is funny, that there is humor in everything – including the seriousness in which so many of us hold everything. And I also mean delighted laughter – the laughter that arises from simply paying attention to how much beauty, magic, and profundity there is.
Which leads us to…
#11: Keep Your Heart Open.
It’s a natural but unfortunate impulse to close our hearts when life is unpleasant – like raising our arms to shield ourselves against an incoming attack. What I mean by “closing our heart” is a subtle contraction around the center of the chest that occurs on multiple levels simultaneously – physical, emotional, and energetic.
We do this as an instinctive act of self-preservation, but it becomes a habit of not feeling. Living with a closed heart is like narrowing the spectrum of reality we allow ourselves to experience. For what it’s worth, though, I don’t believe the heart only has two states – open or closed – it’s a range.
I recommend consciously living through your heart. Feel through your heart. Breathe through your heart. Listen through your heart. Keep it open even when you’re in pain, even when you’re afraid, even when you’re angry. You can do this just by intending it. Put your attention there, soften, and let it open like a flower.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Three Ways to Invite More Life into Your Life
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It seemed to take longer for winter to start but we’re finally in it, and I’d like to share some Eastern philosophy about this season. Much of my career as well as my personal spiritual practice has focused on the lessons of the natural world. Every season has things to teach us, but the winter lessons seem to be among the hardest for modern humans to accept. What winter represents is so vital and yet so absent from most Americans’ lives.
In Chinese Five Element theory, winter corresponds to the Water element. In wintry places, we can often look out at the landscape and see little but water (albeit frozen as snow). Water represents resources, reserves, and potential – like a well or a spring. Simply looking at where civilizations have developed shows us just how directly water dictates the potential for life to develop.
In the same way, winter is a time of potential energy, when the outward activity of plants and animals is minimal. Compared to the other seasons, it’s relatively dark and still. Winter is the time of year when stored reserves are most important, because fewer resources are available outdoors. Historically, this has been a time to sleep more, when we rely on our stores of food and fuel to get us through the season.
Likewise, Ayurvedic philosophy considers winter the season of kapha (“kahp – ha”), one of three fundamental components of the human mind and body, which is also associated with water. As kapha pertains to our ability to accumulate, store, and bulk up, it fits well with the Chinese concepts above. Our kapha is what gives the mind and body water’s qualities of suppleness and flow. It’s integral in the lubrication of our joints and other tissues (especially important in the dryness of winter). The kapha time of year is best used to save up energy.
Daoist philosophy sees each season as representing one of the critical steps in any cycle or project. The seasons mimic the life of an organism, a creative endeavor, or a business venture. These seasonal dynamics can be seen clearly in the life of a plant: In winter, plants are mostly dormant. Their energy is stored in their roots or seeds, resting in the cold ground. Spring awakens this potential energy. Shoots pop up everywhere and plants have direction and drive. Summer brings the pinnacle of growth, expansion, and flowering. The cool nights of late summer ripen grains and fruits, ushering in the harvest period. In fall, leaves are shed, withering and decay occur, and the remnants of the past year’s growth return to the earth to fortify the soil. Finally, in winter again, plants become still.
Each idea begins in its “winter” as potential energy, a seed. In its spring, the idea grows into a plan; structure and direction are established. Summer brings greater fire, excitement, momentum, and connection with others. In late summer, the idea achieves maturation and it yields a return – the harvest – and an experience of abundance. In its fall, the material expression of this cycle gives way to a recognition of the deeper richness of the experience itself. We reflect on the essence that existed before and throughout this cycle – the formlessness beneath the form that has fallen away. Back in winter again, it’s necessary to be still, turn inward, and reflect before the cycle starts over.
When we’re out of balance, we tend to skip over seasons or to chronically get stuck in one seasonal phase. Our modern lifestyle deprives many of us of any real winter. We love new projects and planning (spring) and fervent growth and expansion (summer). We even like to dwell on how good the past was (fall), but we often hate to stop completely (winter).
In humans, the “resources” water represents are encompassed in the Chinese concept of jing and the Ayurvedic concept of ojas or “essence” – the unreplenishable allotment of lifeforce that we’re all born with. Our lifestyle strongly influences how long our jing/ojas will last. As our jing/ojas runs out, we start to age and eventually we die.
If we allow life to flow (like water) in its own natural way – not attempting to manipulate it, not fighting it, not pushing it – it flows (and our jing/ojas lasts) a very long time. But when we’re always running (mentally or physically), when we live life without regard for how much energy we actually have, how much sleep we get, or how well we eat, we burn our jing/ojas up faster. When we habitually use stimulants like coffee and sugar, we’re deny the necessity of winter, and in so doing, we convert our deep reserves into short-term energy we can use right now.
Sometimes water is a rushing river. Other times it’s a placid lake. Each form has its time and place. When fear comes up (the emotion of the water element), we tend to run – like a river. It’s often some form of fear that makes us feel we can’t stop. We can’t let death catch up to us, must always prepare for the future. Fear makes us feel that there’s always an endless to-do list. Our ultimate fear is of running out of resources, running out of the things that make life good, and running out of life itself.
Ironically, when we’re always running around to survive, we miss out on enjoying the things that make like sweet. One reason we get sick more in the winter is that we’re violating a natural dynamic. The world around us has turned inward and reduced its ambitions, but we refuse to go along with this flow.
The best thing we can do for ourselves is to incorporate “winter” into every day, making space for stillness throughout our lives. Meditation, restorative yoga, qi gong, breathing, and tai chi are ideal practices. Watching TV and movies, reading, socializing, and being on the computer don’t count. While sleep is incredibly important, it doesn’t give us all the benefits of cultivating stillness (especially mental stillness) in waking life – which teaches us the vital skill of maintaining a peaceful foundation in the midst of drama and uncertainty.
In the winter season, I recommend making a special practice of (1) noticing how you relate to winter and (2) meeting with the spirit of winter and being open to what it has to teach you.
What arises in you when you think of winter?
If winter for you is a time of lots of activity, how does it feel to consider slowing down?
If you tend to live in the future in your mind and have a hard time being present in the current moment, what is it that being still uncomfortable? What do you think will happen if you stop?
What part of you insists that you always need to be preparing for the future? Can you have a dialog with that facet of yourself? What does it need in order to be at peace?
If you resist winter, what is it about the winter that you dislike?
Can you meet with the spirit of winter – without any of your own preconceptions? What is it like?
Is winter actually “depressing” or is the gloom a response to your inability to stop, listen, feel, look inward, and accept?
What are your negative stories (if any) about winter?
If you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, to what degree have you adopted others’ stories about the energy of winter, and is this consistent with your own felt experience?
What is winter asking you to do in order to come into sync with nature?
If you have a difficult time with winter, I hope this winter is different. I hope this is the year you make peace with it. And if you have a hard time incorporating the “winter phase” into your life, my wish for you is that you learn to bask in that stillness, to feel it recharging you, to be fully okay with stopping.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Meeting with the Spirit of Winter
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